IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a global network of nine Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Centers designed to help customers launch new products more quickly by leveraging proven business methodologies and software development models.

These PLM Centers of Excellence (CoE) are located in Nice-La Gaude, France; Boeblingen, Germany; Beijing, China; Bangalore and New Dehli, India; Yamato, Japan; Montreal, Canada; and in the United States in Hawthorne, N.Y. and Dallas, Texas.

The CoE 'lab environment' offers clients access to more than 3,000 researchers, 9,000 software developers and 1,000 consulting and technology practitioners worldwide. The teams work closely with clients to help integrate the millions of processes and transactions -- typical of any product's lifecycle -- across a PLM community of partners, suppliers and customers. Paramount to clients visiting the centers is the need to access a proven set of "PLM best practices" for use in new product development initiatives key to a company's future growth and brand reputation.